It certainly wasn’t my last driver’s test. Or any essay I submitted in university.

Remembering birthdays and anniversaries? Forget it. And if grades were given for skill with airport check-in machines, I’d come close to failing every time.

Getting a perfect score on anything is a challenge, which makes it all the more impressive to see the unblemished record put up by Alberta’s seven supervised consumption sites when it comes to saving lives.

That’s right, since late 2017, the facilities in Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, Grande Prairie and Red Deer have collectively reversed more than 4,300 overdoses without a single client dying in their care.

For all the posturing and pontificating that has surrounded the supervised consumption site debate in this province, that’s the statistic that should matter most.

• Some 300,000 visits to the facilities as of the end of March, with numbers rising every quarter.

• More than 3,700 ambulance calls averted.

• More than 35,000 referrals for site clients to access other services, including close to 11,000 for addiction and treatment services.

That’s fine, you say. But what about the negative community impacts, like needle debris, crime rates and police calls? That’s in the report, too.

The highlights there show a decline in reported needle debris in Edmonton, more needles now being returned in Lethbridge than given out by staff, and crime rates that have held generally stable or even decreased.

While I’d like to see the analysis of these factors become more comprehensive, standardized and updated, I’m told this is in the plans and further study is ongoing.

All of which makes me wonder what Jason Luan, the associate minister of mental health and addictions, could possibly mean when he insists that analysis of community impacts has been missing and that the former NDP government “grossly ignored” consultations with neighbourhoods.

This has been the one of the UCP’s main talking points around supervised consumption sites, and is the basis for the government’s announcement last week of a panel led by former Edmonton police Chief Rod Knecht.

I wrote last week of the panel, suggesting that they have been given only half a mandate, asked to study social and economic fallout of the sites but not their usage or benefits. And even on that one half, I questioned whether the panel was really travelling into uncharted territory.

Before the sites were established, they had to go through an extensive community assessment and engagement.

Since opening, agencies that operate the facilities have continued with such engagement at regular intervals.

A business group in Edmonton attempting to have the approvals quashed, in part by arguing lack of consultation, lost its court case.

And if all that’s not enough to dismantle the government’s argument, the provincially funded Institute for Health Economics (IHE) had been tasked to do a project centred on the sites. The institute’s website is now silent on what became of that initiative.

In short, the supervised consumption facilities, none of which is yet two years old, have to be among the most poked, prodded, and pondered public services in Alberta.

Why Luan would continue to offer comments to the contrary remains a mystery, and the minister could not find an opportunity to talk to Postmedia after three days of requests.

Instead, Alberta Health officials provided a response indicating the ministry was well aware of the work around the sites.

As for the IHE’s project, officials said work was done on developing an appropriate process for collecting and evaluating evidence on the sites. The next step would have seen that framework put into action, but the UCP decided to go a different way by appointing Knecht’s panel.

Which still doesn’t explain the UCP’s rhetoric about how consultation and community impacts to date have been “grossly ignored.”

Ultimately, despite all the effort and study, the government’s position is to insist that people continue to have deep concerns and feel ignored.

I can sympathize with that to some degree. Whatever the level of consultation, having a supervised consumption site move in on my block would undoubtedly raise my eyebrows. And I do commend the part of the panel’s mandate geared to look at business effects and property values.

Nonetheless, the danger here is a government that seems to be playing on the idea that feelings are more important than evidence.

Legitimate concerns obviously should be accommodated where possible, but a responsible government would also try to put those feelings in context rather than exploiting them to undo a policy choice it doesn’t like.

Perhaps the Knecht panel will take exactly that proper approach.

But given its questionable premise, it’s hard not to be skeptical that this is an exercise more geared to look for problems than facts.

And those facts show one thing above all else, with 100 per cent clarity.

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